It cannot come from abroad.  If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher.  As a nation of free men, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.  I hope I am not over-wary; but, if I am not, there is even now something of ill-omen amongst us.  I mean the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country, the growing disposition to substitute the wild and furious passions in lieu of the sober judgment of the courts, and the worse than savage mobs for the executive ministers of justice.  This disposition is awfully fearful in any community; and that it now exists in ours, though grating to our feelings to admit it, it would be a violation of truth and an insult to our intelligence to deny.  Accounts of outrages committed by mobs form the every-day news of the times.  They have pervaded the country from New England to Louisiana; they are neither peculiar to the eternal snows of the former, nor the burning sun of the latter.  They are not the creature of climate; neither are they confined to the slaveholding or non-slaveholding States.  Alike they spring up among the pleasure-hunting masters of Southern slaves and the order-loving citizens of the land of steady habits.  Whatever their course may be, it is common to the whole country.  Here, then, is one point at which danger may be expected.  The question recurs, How shall we fortify against it?  The answer is simple.  Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well-wisher to his posterity, swear by the blood of the Revolution, never to violate in the least particular the laws of the country, and never to tolerate their violation by others.  As the patriots of ‘seventy-six’ did to the support of the Declaration of Independence, so to the support of the Constitution and the Laws let every American pledge his life, his property, and his sacred honor; let every man remember that to violate the law is to trample on the blood of his father, and to tear the charter of his own and his children’s liberty.  Let reverence for the laws be breathed by every American mother to the lisping babe that prattles on her lap.  Let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges.  Let it be written in primers, spelling-books, and in almanacs.  Let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice.  And, in short, let it become the political religion of the nation.

During the years of Lincoln’s service in the Illinois Legislature the Democratic party was strongly dominant throughout the State.  The feeling on the subject of slavery was decidedly in sympathy with the South.  A large percentage of the settlers in the southern and middle portions of Illinois were from States in which slave labor was maintained; and although the determination not to permit the institution to obtain a foothold in the new commonwealth was general, the people were opposed to any action which should affect its condition where it was already established.